Why MedOne redesigned their strategic planning process

MedOne Healthcare Partners is an independent, multispecialty physician practice based in Columbus, Ohio. They specialize in providing hospital medicine, preadmission testing, post-acute care, sleep medicine, wound care, and other services. Their team includes 117 physicians, 72 advanced practice clinicians, and assorted leadership and administrative staff.

In 2024, MedOne’s strategy team, consisting of Chief Operating Officer Fran Feehan and Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Michael Heinze, redesigned their strategic planning process to better engage the organization. In the past, MedOne took a top-down approach to strategy development. A small group of senior leaders created the goals and initiatives and then cascaded them through the organization. However, the strategy team would often hear team members express confusion about the direction of the organization.

The strategy team created a new process to accomplish three objectives:

• Engage the broader workforce in generating ideas: MedOne is a multidisciplinary organization with multiple lines of business. The strategy team knew their team members would have good ideas, but members needed a structured process to harness them.
• Find untapped growth opportunities: MedOne experienced significant organic growth in recent years, driven by word-of-mouth and existing relationships. Looking ahead, however, leaders recognized both fewer obvious growth opportunities and less room for error. MedOne leaders wanted a process to surface creative ideas beyond their historic playbook.
• Develop broad support for execution: MedOne leaders wanted a more inclusive process so everyone in the organization understood the goals and their roles in achieving them.

MedOne's new strategic planning process

MedOne strategy leaders designed a new, five-step strategic planning process which included two important innovations. First, leaders convened 21 separate line-of-business meetings over three months. They designed these meetings to crowdsource ideas for new strategic initiatives from the broader clinical workforce as well as leaders from support functions.

Second, they transformed their strategy retreat to better engage the workforce. Many organizations use strategy retreats to communicate and cascade completed strategic plans. Instead, MedOne designed their retreat to allow experts across the organization to evaluate each idea before the executive team made final decisions.

The 21 strategy sessions represented MedOne’s different lines of business, including hospital medicine, post-acute care, and specific services like wound care, sleep medicine, and preadmission testing.

Each meeting lasted between 2 to 2.5 hours and followed the same structure:

• Protected time: Strategy leaders scheduled meetings to ensure participants could focus on the discussions without interruption from clinical duties.
• Moderation: The strategy team moderated all sessions.
• Leadership involvement: Meetings included medical directors and leaders within the practice who had a comprehensive understanding of their service lines.
• Standardized discussion: Moderators used a standard questionnaire in every session to maintain consistency. The questionnaire included topics like internal and external politics, regulatory compliance, stakeholder challenges, market disruptions, and provider operations.

Sessions generated over 70 ideas in total, including new business opportunities, service expansions, quality improvement opportunities, ways to resolve care gaps, and workflow changes. According to Heinze, these sessions produced several great ideas that could only come from those providing the services.

For example, leaders of physician advisor services discussed the need for a more structured system to unify operations across their various contracts. “People have great ideas,” said Heinze. “They just may not know how to actualize them.”

Following these sessions, the strategy team reviewed the list of ideas and pared it down to 51. Some ideas removed from the list were valuable, no-brainer improvements that should proceed without deliberation or formal inclusion in a new strategic plan. Other ideas could be combined with others into larger initiatives since they addressed the same problem.

MedOne then conducted an all-day strategy retreat with 50 participants from across the organization. Attendees included leaders from all line-of-business strategy sessions. To create an inclusive event, the strategy team also opened the meeting to 10 volunteers selected by lottery. This opened participation to individuals not included in line of business meetings who wanted to be part of the event.

MedOne’s redesigned retreat differed from traditional approaches. Rather than use the retreat to present a list of final, approved strategic goals and initiatives, the strategy team used the time to gather input on all 51 ideas generated by the strategy sessions. The new retreat format prioritized group assessment and discussion rather than final approval decisions.

• Idea ownership: Line-of-business leaders who proposed ideas were asked to pitch their concepts at the retreat. This helped create a sense of investment among the attendees. This also means leaders who proposed ideas had thought through them in detail.
• Equal time: The retreat allotted 90 seconds for each pitch, followed by 2-3 minutes of questions and discussion.
• Randomized order: Pitches occurred in arbitrary order. Presenters did not know when they would make their pitches, which kept them engaged throughout the day. This approach also ensured that no single idea dominated the discussion due to its position on the agenda.
• Transparent voting: Participants voted on each idea after pitch and discussion using a tool called Poll Everywhere. Participants rated each idea on a 1-4 scale based on two criteria: estimated resources required (x-axis) and estimated impact on the organization (y-axis). The results were displayed on a quadrant chart, allowing everyone to see how each idea compared to others.
• Cross-pollination: The retreat facilitated cross-pollination of ideas, as participants from different service lines and support functions provide input and feedback on each idea.

Following the retreat, the strategy team and the CEO analyzed the prioritization results and pared down the list of 51 ideas to 21 initiatives. The executive team knew they couldn’t say “yes” to every idea, nor could they only pursue initiatives with the highest investment requirements. Therefore, they approved a balanced set of initiatives that were aspirational and achievable.

Retreat voting provided a helpful ranking, but the team made decisions using some overarching principles. For example, approved initiatives had to align with the organization’s mission and vision. MedOne leaders also wanted strategic initiatives that prioritize quality and make healthcare better, confident that financial results would follow. These principles provided important filters for the leadership team when deciding on the final list of initiatives.

After final selection, the leadership team sorted the initiatives into four goal categories:

• People: Professional development, engagement, and culture.
• Quality: Improving clinical outcomes, patient care, and operational efficiency.
• Vertical growth: Expanding existing services and deepening market penetration.
• Horizontal growth: Diversifying services and entering new markets.

MedOne then held a launch meeting in December to share the final list of 21 initiatives with the broader organization. The strategy team presented the initiatives to all stakeholders, with each initiative assigned an accountable executive champion and two to three owners. Owners include line of business leaders who will implement the initiatives but may also include individuals from other functions critical to execution. To increase awareness, the strategy team also socialized the final plan in several other forums, including staff meetings.

Why MedOne's strategic approach worked for them

MedOne's new approach to strategic plan development provided three advantages:

MedOne's small strategy team applied the collective expertise of their broader workforce to generate innovative ideas. This crowdsourcing approach uncovered hidden growth opportunities leadership would have otherwise overlooked.

One notable example is the idea for expanding sleep medicine services to post-acute facilities using remote technology. This idea came from a provider who was passionate about sleep medicine and saw a significant opportunity to improve patient care. The strategy team recognized the potential of this idea, built a business case around it, and allocated resources for its implementation.

The new process engaged the workforce throughout the entire process, from generating ideas to final implementation. Three attributes proved critical to engagement:

• Inclusive meetings: The 21 line-of-business strategy sessions included a diverse group of participants to consider ideas from all levels of the organization.
• Engaging retreat: The retreat allowed leaders from all lines of business and support functions to evaluate and vote on the ideas.
• Energetic launch: Since individuals across the organization participated in the entire process, the final strategic plan was well-understood when leaders revealed it at the launch meeting. The strategic initiatives originated from the workforce, which motivated staff members to implement their ideas at launch.

Broadly including MedOne staff in the process created champions for the new strategy and addressed comments from the workforce about unclear direction.

A common pitfall of strategic planning is creating goals and initiatives that feel boilerplate or too high-level to translate to day-to-day actions. General goal setting can lead to unsuccessful initiatives and a disengaged workforce.

MedOne designed a new process for their organization while addressing their market conditions. Recognizing the need for new ideas, they involved a broader swath of experts across the enterprise. This allowed the MedOne strategy team to dig into nuances of each idea from multiple angles, including operations, reimbursement, clinical capabilities, and regulatory issues. As a result, the leadership team made more informed decisions about which initiatives to approve, and initiative owners were more prepared to act and implement.